For this week’s round-up of commercial drone industry news, we look at milestones from Europe’s BURDI project, how the AWS outage impacted drone operations, and innovations in the use of uncrewed systems on farms.

Impact of the AWS Outage on the Drone Industry

This week’s AWS outage affected many industries, including banking, online commerce, and healthcare. Focusing on the drone industry, Dronelife took a look at “how deeply drone operations rely on cloud infrastructure and why resilience matters.” According to Dronelife, “many drone software providers use cloud services such as AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure to run their infrastructure,” and “during a large-scale cloud incident, authentication errors or data routing failures could make it harder for pilots to log in or for teams to upload imagery for processing.” The impact of an outage like this can vary from the total shutdown of drown operations to limited functionality, and any sector that relies on drones, including public safety and emergency missions, can be harmed. Ultimately, Dronelife says, the industry needs to take steps to improve resiliency and build a more connected system.

Europe’s BURDI Project Presents Milestones in Drone Integration

Launched in 2022, Europe’s BURDI (Belgium-Netherlands U-space Reference Design Implementation) project has made significant progress in the advancement of U-space (infrastructure that enables the integration of drones into the broader aviation ecosystem) and drone ATM integration. Recently, Unifly reported on significant BURDI milestones, including the development of the first cross-border U-space reference design between Belgium and the Netherlands, creation of a U-space Concept of Operations (ConOps) aligned with SESAR and CINEA requirements, airspace risk assessments, stakeholder coordination mechanisms, and multilevel governance frameworks, and important demonstration flights, including BVLOS drone operations in the Port of Antwerp / Antwerp Harbour geozone. In addition, Unifly reported that BURDI has completed a medical logistics trial, contributed to weather information services for U-space, and engaged drone community and ecosystem stakeholders in efforts such as “surveys to assess U-space cost modelling and market uptake, to advance social acceptance.”

Drones for Deer Deterrence

In recent weeks, our commercial drone industry roundup has presented a number of examples of how uncrewed technology is being used to improve farming operations. This week, we feature yet another—an effort by a team of University of Minnesota students to use drones to “scare deer away from farms to prevent loss in crops.” As reported in Ag Week, “FarmGuard’s Multi-Robot Deer Deterrence System” uses a drone with “onboard cameras and computer vision algorithms to detect deer in real-time during both day and night, and employs deterrents such as lights and speakers.” The system also uses "optimized flight paths to maximize coverage while minimizing energy consumption." This innovative system won the Small Farm Technology award at the Farm Robotics Challenge, “a national competition for college-level student teams tackling real-world agricultural problems using advanced robotics.”